


Howl

by hilarychuff



Series: In Any World (In Any Way) [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, Halloween, Horror, Movie: Scream (1996)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:55:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27307342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hilarychuff/pseuds/hilarychuff
Summary: “Do you like scary movies, Sansa?”Hello, and welcome to my just-barely-timely Halloween fic. We are now presenting Sansa Stark as Sidney Prescott from Scream (1996). Come on in if you're ready for a ~spooky thrill.~
Relationships: Arya Stark & Sansa Stark, Arya Stark/Gendry Waters (mentioned), Joffrey Baratheon/Sansa Stark (but like you know it's Scream so), Jon Snow & Sansa Stark, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark (it's there if you squint), Robb Stark & Sansa Stark, Theon Greyjoy & Sansa Stark
Series: In Any World (In Any Way) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2075064
Comments: 8
Kudos: 32





	Howl

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is my ASOIAF Sansa-centric 'Scream' AU! Obviously there will be spoilers for 'Scream' because that is where the plot points come from, but there are also mentioned spoilers for 'Scream 4.' Lots of dialogue has been lifted directly from the movie and also from a slightly-outdated script I found online because I didn't want to pay to sit through the whole movie multiple times. 
> 
> This is a slasher AU, so, uh, violence, murder, betrayal, etc, beware. If you want to check out a lil graphic I made for this, [you can see it here.](https://hilarychuff.tumblr.com/post/633638572695715840/howl-a-sansa-centric-scream-au) Here are [some manips I made](https://hilarychuff.tumblr.com/post/634736858366132224/did-you-know-that-i-am-actually-not-done-thinking). And [here's a bigger graphic](https://hilarychuff.tumblr.com/post/637463005553098752/howl-an-asoiaf-scream-au-its-been-a-year-since) with more characters. Also!!! Tumblr user alemoncakelife made a very cool and sweet graphic that [you can see here!](https://alemoncakelife.tumblr.com/post/633692455000244224/howl-hilarychuff-multifandom-archive-of-our) It is so beautiful and I love it so much. Anyway! Love you! Have fun!

“Joff? What — what are you doing here?”

Technically, Sansa’s boyfriend wasn’t allowed at the Stark house anymore. He’d been effectively banned ever since he’d gotten into an actual, honest-to-gods fist fight with Arya, and though Sansa knew her little sister had been the one to throw the first punch, she hadn’t wanted to argue. Things had been tense between the Stark sisters for too long, and after their parents died — Well, it wasn’t worth fighting anymore. Robb was the new head of the house, and while he couldn’t stop Sansa from dating anyone (and the old gods knew she still needed _some_ normalcy to cling to after her whole life was turned on its head), he could declare her boyfriend permanently off-limits on the property. 

That didn’t seem to stop Joffrey from crawling through her bedroom window, however — and startling a shriek out of Sansa when his fist first slammed against the glass. He’d pulled the screen away and leered at her from the other side of the pane, but she’d been quick to scurry across the room and push the frame up so he could come in. 

“What do you mean what am I doing here?” he shot back as he hauled himself the rest of the way through the window then stood up straight. “Can’t a guy come see his girlfriend without any ulterior motives?”

As always, he was quick to pull her against him, one hand at her waist and the other at her jaw, his mouth finding hers even as she mumbled against his lips, “My brother’s right in the other room.” 

On cue, Robb banged a hand against her bedroom door. 

“Sansa?” he called through the thick wood. “Are you OK? I heard shouting.”

He rattled the door knob, and Sansa sent up a thankful prayer to the Seven that she’d started keeping it locked at night. 

“Hide,” she hissed to Joffrey before calling out loudly, “Gods, knock much?”

“I did knock,” Robb grumbled when she finally came to the door — only once she'd made sure her boyfriend couldn’t be seen where he’d ducked down low to hide behind her bed. “Anyway, I’m about to go to sleep. My flight leaves first thing in the morning. The prospective students’ visit at Riverrun goes all weekend, so I won’t be back ‘til Sunday, but I left cash out on the table and the number for Uncle Edmure’s, just in case.”

Sansa huffed. “I’ve got it, Robb. And I’m actually not that incapable of taking care of myself, thanks. Did you bother giving this speech to Arya?”

Her older brother flushed, and she knew the answer was no. She was the second oldest of the Stark kids and did most of the cooking and cleaning around the house, but Robb never seemed to stop seeing her as his baby sister, no matter the fact that she had just turned 17 and Rickon, the actual baby of the family, was only 12. 

“Whatever,” Sansa said, struck by her own pang of guilt when she saw Robb’s guilty look, and rolled her shoulders as if to shake her annoyance off. He was just trying to be a protective big brother. It was sweet, in a way. “Have a good time, OK?” she said instead. “We’ll all be fine. Seriously. Bran and Rickon are staying with friends, and Arya and I will manage on our own.”

“I know,” Robb said, and reached out to tug on a lock of her hair. “I just worry, especially since — I mean, you know." He paused, awkwardly, then stepped back into the hall. "Well, night.”

With the door finally shut behind her — and her back leaned against it as she clicked the lock in place once more — Joff popped back up. 

“Your brother is so annoying,” he said, and in an instant he was right back in front of her, pressing her into the wood as his lips found the underside of her jaw and his tongue swept across her pulse point. 

The move rendered her breathless, but after a moment she gathered her thoughts enough to push him away. 

“What are you doing here, anyway?”

Joff tilted his head to one side, smirking. “I was at home watching a movie when it occurred to me that I’ve never snuck through your bedroom window before,” he said. 

“Oh, yeah?” Sansa asked, the words coming out shaky as he ducked his head down to ghost his teeth over the shell of her ear. “What were you watching?”

“ _Scream_ , but it was edited for TV,” he said as he pressed kisses down her jaw, neck, shoulder. “All the good stuff was cut out, and I started thinking about us and how, two years ago, we started off kinda hot and heavy, a nice sold R rating on our way to an NC-17.” At that, he punctuated his point with a bite to her shoulder, and a sharp gasp of pain escaped her mouth. “But things changed,” he said, and soothed the hurt with another kiss. “Lately, we’re just edited for television.”

Sansa frowned and squirmed away. It was true that things had been… different with Joffrey over the past year. He was never exactly the most sensitive boyfriend, but he’d been downright callous after her parents’ death. He didn’t seem to understand why she was suddenly spending so much more time with her siblings instead of him — he’d even dumped her after he claimed she ignored him at the funeral — but she hadn’t been able to bear losing anyone else, and, when he apologized, she’d been quick to take him back. Still, she hadn’t quite forgotten that sting, and it had stopped her from getting in too deep on more than one occasion. 

“So you thought you could just sneak in here, and, what?” she grumbled, but Joff just rolled his eyes. 

“Relax,” he commanded. “I wouldn’t dream of breaking your underwear rule. I just thought we might do some on top of the clothes stuff.”

It was hardly poetry, but the respect for her — for the boundaries she’d set — had Sansa softening. “Five minutes,” she promised, “and then you have to go.”

\--

The next morning, Robb was up and off before Sansa even finished getting dressed. She waved from her window but was soon preoccupied making sure Bran and Rickon had their bags packed both for school and for the weekend. Technically, they were old enough to stay home, too, but Bran was heading to the Reeds’ and Rickon was off to one of the Walders’. Sansa could never remember which Frey cousin was which, only that both were stupidly wealthy and had the latest Wii or PlayStation or whatever it was that Rickon was constantly drooling over. 

When Ned and Cat were still alive, the Starks had been pretty well off, too. They still had money, technically. Their parents had left them plenty of it after their deaths. But with five kids’ college tuitions to budget for and not much new income coming in, they didn’t have a lot of extra cash to splash out on video games. Robb had pushed off university for a year and spent the last few months since graduation working in town to save up (and to look after his siblings until Sansa turned 18 and could step into the role of legal adult), but it was finally time for him to restart the application process. Deep down, they all knew he would end up at the local junior college, at least for a while, but Sansa had convinced him to visit his former dream school. Getting him to attend, assuming he was accepted, would be a battle for another day. 

Soon enough, all the kids were out the door and on their respective buses — Rickon heading to the junior high, the rest of them to the high school — but Sansa had no sooner stepped onto The Red Keep Academy’s front lawn than she noticed all the police cars and news vans. 

Instantly, she felt herself shiver, and Arya reached out to squeeze her arm. 

“Do you believe this shit?” Arya asked as Bran breezed past them and walked inside, seemingly unbothered by the mayhem unfolding in front of the main school building. 

“What happened?” Sansa could hear the tremble in her voice, but Arya just linked their arms and marched them past Margaery Tyrell, who was delivering some kind of tabloid-level monologue to her cameraman. The older girl had been friendly enough as Sansa’s varsity cheer captain during her freshman year, but they were on decidedly less civil terms these days.

“Daenerys and Viserys Targaryen were killed last night,” Arya said with a grimace. “Mycah was just telling me and Bran on the bus. And not just killed, Sans. We’re talking splatter movie killed — split open end to end.”

“Gods,” Sansa breathed. “Daenerys sits next to me in English.”

“Not anymore,” her little sister answered. “Her boyfriend found her hanging from a tree. Her insides on the outside.”

“Do they know who did it?”

“Fucking clueless. I texted Jon, and he said that they’re interrogating the entire school. Teachers, students, staff, janitors…”

“They think it’s school related?”

“They don’t know. Jon said this is the worst crime they’ve ever seen. Even worse than —” 

Arya stopped herself abruptly, but she didn’t need to finish the sentence. Sansa knew what she was thinking, because Sansa was thinking it, too. 

“Well, it’s bad,” she finished. “They’re bringing in the feds. This is big.”

\--

Arya had been right: The police were interviewing everyone. 30 minutes before lunch, she’d been pulled out of class to sit in the principal’s office with Mr. Arryn, Sheriff Mormont, and Jon — or Deputy Snow, as he’d reminded her to call him. He’d only been on the force for a few months, and she wasn’t used to seeing him as anyone other than her older brother’s best friend, but that hadn’t stopped him from helping Sheriff Mormont grill her about the Targaryens and what she’d been up to the night before. By the time she was done, everyone else was already eating outside. 

Joff had waited for her by her locker, though, and they walked out together to find Theon loudly recounting the story of his own interview as he stretched out across one of the lunch benches, flopping back against the table. In previous years, he would’ve considered himself too cool to hang out with the younger Stark kids, but ever since he’d failed a few of his classes and been forced to repeat the twelfth grade, he didn’t seem to mind their company too much. After all, with most of his friends off at college (well, other than Robb and Jon), hanging out with an underclassman was hardly the social suicide it used to be. He didn’t even seem to mind that Bran was only a freshman. He did hate Joffrey — and Joffrey hated everyone Sansa hung out with — but they all seemed to call a truce at lunch for some reason. Even now, as Theon shared the gory details of his story, Joff just quietly dropped down onto his own bench.

“Hunt?” Arya asked, butting in before Theon was finished. “Why would they ask if you like to hunt?”

“How should I know?” he snapped, clearly annoyed at being interrupted. “They just did.”

“They asked because the bodies were gutted,” Jojen answered clinically. Though he was Bran’s best friend, he was smart enough to have skipped a couple of grades, landing him in more than a few of Sansa’s classes. There was something about him that gave her goosebumps, but he was nice enough for the most part. 

Arya didn’t seem to mind him — or what he’d said. “They didn’t ask me if I like to hunt.”

“Because there’s no way a girl could have killed them,” Joff said with a sneer. 

Arya shot him a withering look. “That is such bullshit,” she said. “The killer could easily be female. _Scream 4_?”

“Actually, Charlie did pretty much all of the killing for Jill,” Jojen weighed in helpfully. “It’s not exactly the same.”

“Yeah, Dany and her brother were completely hollowed out,” Theon said. “Takes a man to do something like that.”

“Or a man’s mentality,” Arya insisted, but the conversation was making Sansa queasy. She needed to change the subject — and Bran, ever knowledgeable about other people’s gossip, jumped in just in time.

“Theon, didn’t you used to date Daenerys?” he asked. 

“He wishes,” Arya answered at the same time as Theon said, “For about two seconds.”

Joff threw back his head and laughed way too loudly. “Oh, yeah. Didn’t she dump you for your sister?”

Theon fixed him with a glare. “I dumped her,” was all he said. 

“And are the police aware you dated the victim?” Joffrey taunted. 

“What are you saying?” Theon demanded. “That I killed her or something?”

Arya wasn’t often one to take Theon’s side, but always looking for a fight with Joffrey, she jumped to his defense. “Theon didn’t do shit. We were playing Call of Duty online all last night. And where were you?”

Sansa didn’t want to admit the truth — that Joff had been trying to get his hand up her skirt just a few rooms over from Arya — but thankfully her boyfriend ignored her sister entirely. 

“Was that before or after you slashed them, Theon? Did you really put Dany’s liver in the mailbox?” he jeered. “I heard they found her liver in the mailbox.”

\--

After school, Sansa hurried home to pack a bag for both her and Arya. Earlier, all she'd wanted was to spend the weekend home alone, hiding from the rest of the world. After the news about the murders, she wasn’t exactly feeling as confident about that plan. Arya had fencing practice, but she’d agreed to text Jon and ask if they could stay at his place for a few days. It was small but sweet, just a one bedroom apartment he first started renting once he’d gotten officially emancipated at 16. Emancipated from which parent, Sansa didn’t exactly know — one of them was dead, but Jon didn’t like to talk about either much, and the two of them had never been close enough for her to ask. Robb probably knew, and likely Arya, too, but it felt inappropriately intrusive to find out from anyone other than Jon himself. Regardless, once he’d found his own place, he’d made sure to get a pull-out couch specifically for Stark family sleepovers. 

Sansa had never spent the night before, but everyone else had. In addition to being best friends with the eldest of the family, Jon had also become something of a surrogate big brother to Sansa’s younger siblings when he’d moved in for the better part of his junior high and high school experience. Arya had spent more nights on that pull-out couch than Jon had probably bargained for when he bought it, but he didn’t seem to mind. And Sansa would be happy enough to cuddle up to her little sister with an armed officer in the other room if that meant they were all safe while a murderer was on the loose. Still, she didn’t want to intrude if they weren’t welcome. If she wasn't welcome. 

“Are you sure we can stay over? He knows Robb won’t be back until Sunday, right?” Sansa asked, raising one shoulder to pin her phone against her cheek as she bustled around the room. 

“Yeah, it’s Jon. He’s gonna pick me up from practice once he gets off work, but then we’ll come get you, OK?”

“And he has room for both of us? I can always ask a friend…”

They both knew that wasn’t true, but Arya didn’t call her out on it. Sansa had been popular, once, but she’d become something of a social recluse in the last year, only hanging out with her siblings, their friends, and Joff. Her boyfriend probably would’ve been all too happy to have her over, but she had a feeling any self-proclaimed respect for what he called her “underwear rule” would’ve quickly gone out the window. 

“It’s just a weekend, Sans,” Arya said instead. “It’ll be fine.”

“OK,” Sansa answered, and let out a small sigh of relief, which her sister seemed to hear. 

After a charged moment of silence, Arya burst out, “Are you sure you’re alright being home alone right now? Jon is still on duty for a few more hours, but I can make Gendry come get you. You know he’ll do anything I say.”

Sansa forced a laugh, though it was more for her sister’s sake than her own. “I’m fine,” she lied. “It’s just — you know, the police and reporters… It brings it all back. But it’s only a few hours. No need to bully Gendry.”

“It’s not bullying if Gendry wants to obey my every command,” Arya refuted with a snicker of her own, but she let the subject drop. “Jon and I will be there by seven, OK? I promise.”

The line went quiet as Arya hung up, and Sansa went back to finishing packing their bags. Now, she just had to find a way to make the time pass — maybe she could get lost in a movie? A nice Arianne Martell rom-com would take her mind off things, surely. Heading over to the couch, she plopped down, kicked her shoes off, and pulled a blanket over herself to channel surf. She’d only clicked through a few different programs before she felt her stomach drop. 

“This is not the first time this small town has endured such tragedy,” Margaery was saying on the screen, one half of her perfect brown curls pinned back from her face. “Only one year ago, Eddard and Catelyn Stark, proud parents of five and pillars of the community, were found murdered in their home —”

Sansa shut off the TV. A book. A book would be good. But she had no sooner grabbed her old, worn copy of _Jenny of Oldstones_ and settled back on the couch then she felt her eyes growing heavy. When she opened them again, the dark had crept into the room around her, the only light coming from her illuminated phone screen. Over the last few hours, she’d gotten two missed calls from her sister and four texts. The first was an apologetic message about how Jon’s shift would be running long, the second asked how she was doing, the third told her not to freak out, and the fourth seemed annoyed at her total lack of response. 

_Are you seriously mad at me? It’s not even my fault!_ Arya had written.

Sansa didn’t understand why she’d become the victim of a deluge of texts until she saw the time stamp on the last one — and then the current time at the top of the screen. Oh. It was 7:20, and Jon and Arya were already more than a quarter of an hour late to pick her up. 

7:00 or 7:30, it wasn’t a big deal, exactly. It didn’t really matter as long as they were on their way. But clearly she had Arya worried. Just as she started tapping out a response, the screen froze, which could only mean she had an incoming call. Her phone was a couple of years old (she kept meaning to upgrade, but gods it was so expensive these days), but if she jammed her thumb hard enough against the screen that usually kicked it back into high gear. Or maybe she was fooling herself, but either way, after a few stubborn stabs of her finger, the screen changed to show that the call had been picked up. 

Swooping it quickly up to her ear, she started, “Arya, I’m fine —” 

“Hello, Sansa,” the voice on the other end said. It wasn’t Arya. 

“Oh,” she responded awkwardly. “Sorry, I thought this was my sister. Who’s calling?”

“You tell me,” the voice rasped. 

Sansa swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Um, I don’t know." 

“Scary night, isn’t it?” they said instead of answering. “With the murders and all, it’s like it’s right out of a horror movie or something.”

“Rickon, if this is some kind of weird joke —”

“Do you like scary movies, Sansa?”

“Walder — or Walder, whoever, this isn’t funny.”

She’d gotten prank phone calls from her youngest brother and his friends before, mainly because the Walders weren’t actually his friends. On the rare occasions he got bored of video games while over at one of their houses, the Frey boys often talked him into doing stupid stunts at other people’s expense. Rickon would grow out of it, but the Walders were the sort of boys who would one day start a prank YouTube channel where they harassed strangers on the street or purposefully smashed jugs of milk at the market. 

“What’s your favorite scary movie?” one of them asked through the phone. 

“This is really unoriginal and low, even for you,” Sansa snapped, suddenly over the whole thing and no longer caring which boy she was speaking to. “You shouldn’t joke about people who were murdered. Didn’t your parents raise you better than that?”

“I don’t know, Sansa — what about your parents?”

She hung up the call before she even finished pulling the phone away from her cheek, but the screen lit up with more texts almost immediately. _Don’t you want to know who I am?_ The message came through from a number Sansa didn’t recognize. _Or maybe the question is — where I am?_

Suddenly feeling like there were eyes on her, she stiffened. Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard, ready to send back _NO_ , but another notification popped up before she’d made her decision. This time, however, it wasn’t a text. It was a voice memo. 

Sansa hesitated — then pressed play. 

“Are you home alone, Sansa?” the voice asked. “Don’t you know it’s dangerous to be home alone these days?”

She hadn't initially given it much thought, but now she was glad she’d neglected to turn on a light the second she woke up. Other than her phone, the house was still dark around her — which meant that if someone was watching, she at least wouldn’t be clearly illuminated through all of the windows. With clumsy fingers, she quickly turned the brightness all the way down on her screen, just in case. 

Another voice memo popped up. “Are the doors locked, Sansa?”

She shivered. She should call 911. Could you call 911 for some kind of cruel prank? What if it was just her baby brother and his stupid friends — what would happen to Rickon if she got the police involved? Fine, then. No cops. She’d call Arya instead, but as soon as she started trying to navigate away from her messages to get to her favorite contacts, her phone froze again. 

_Gods damn it!_ She jammed her thumb against the screen until it went black, but when it flickered back to life, she’d answered another phone call. She didn’t say anything, only listened in silence as she held still. “Well?” the voice asked. “Are they?”

Her stomach dropped, but she swallowed instead of answering — and slowly began to creep towards the front door to make sure the bolt was in place. Over the last year, the house had been updated with a top-of-the-line alarm system, but they only ever put it on when nobody was home or when they went to bed at night. She hadn’t thought to turn it on when she was just hanging around after school waiting for Arya. She wished she had. 

“It’s too late to lock them now,” the voice warned, tinny as she held her phone away from her face. It didn’t matter, though. She was far enough into the entryway that she could see the front door. Navigating away from the call, she flicked on the flashlight on her phone — and the metal bolt visible between the door and the doorjamb caught its light and shone. _Phew._ Quietly, she tiptoed closer to secure the chain on the door, too. 

“Don’t forget the back door,” the caller rasped, and Sansa felt like she’d broken into a cold sweat. Could someone really be watching her? How would they be able to see her? Mustering up all the false bravado she could manage, she raised the phone back to her ear. 

“You know, Rickon, I’m just about over this whole thing,” she managed, proud of the way her voice stayed steady. “Why don’t you try Uncle Benjen instead? Unlike me, he actually does like horror movies. He might even get a kick out of this whole thing instead of just being bored.”

“Am I boring you, Sansa? I could come over and make your night a little more interesting.”

“Whatever. Have fun with your little friends, Rickon.”

But as soon as she pulled the phone away to hang up, the voice burst through the speaker louder than it had been so far. 

“If you hang up, you’ll die just like your parents!”

She froze. 

“Do you want to die, Sansa? Your mother didn’t.”

The words erupted out of her. “Fuck you!” She stabbed the button to end the call with as much malice as she could, then threw her phone through the archway and back into the living room just to make a point. Running, now, her socked feet slid on the hardwood of the kitchen as she reached the back door and checked the lock there. If she could just get to the door that led to the garage, she’d have checked all of them, would be able to reach the downstairs alarm panel in order to throw the system on, but she had no sooner stepped into the hall than the garage door flew open, a dark figure bursting out of it. 

They were on her almost before she could process what had happened, and it was only once she was wrestling with them on the floor that her eyes focused on the white mask looming over her face. The eyes were long and narrow, the mouth a similar oval shape as if open in a howl. Sansa’s hands went up to scrabble against it, to pull the mask off, to push the assailant away, but the shine of metal caught the corner of her eye and she noticed the knife just in time to wriggle a few inches left before it lodged in the wood grain of the floor where her shoulder had just been. 

_Gods, why hadn’t she taken those dumb self-defense lessons with Arya as a kid? Why had she thought cheerleader and dance classes were so important while her little sister was mastering Krav Maga?_

Trained or not, though, Sansa had seen Cameron Diaz’s _What Happens in Vegas_ enough times to know that all you really needed to do to incapacitate a guy was know how to hit them in the softest parts of their body, and she jerked her knee up until she felt it connect. She could hear the person in the mask let out an _oof_ of pain, and she took the opportunity to roll them off of her, scrambling back to her feet, sprinting back to the front door. She threw the lock back and pulled it open, but the chain yanked it backed close, and then she was thrown against it, the knife stabbing into the panel next to her cheek. An arm snaked around her waist as one gloved hand tried to pull the blade back out of the door, but it was stuck, would hardly budge — 

Sansa hadn’t seen many scary movies, but she had seen _Miss Congeniality_ about a million times. _SING!_ she thought. _SING, you bloody idiot! You know SING!_ She stomped her foot down on the boot behind her as hard as she could, slamming an elbow back at the same time, and felt the triumph when she heard another _oof_ from behind the mask. The ghostface killer released their hold, and she shoved them to the ground, turning to hurdle up the stairs two at a time, one hand gripping the railing just in case her socked feet slipped. She made it halfway up before she felt gloved fingers grabbing at her bare ankle, but she didn’t look back, just kicked her foot until it was free, then grabbed a picture frame off the wall and chucked it behind her. She could hear the glass shatter against something and kept running, her stomach lurching once she reached the top. 

She should go in her parents’ room. She should go in her parents’ room and hit the emergency button on the alarm panel to call for the police — but that was where — that was where —

She turned to her room instead, only just barely getting the door shut before she felt it shudder as someone threw their weight against the other side. Leaning her whole body against it, she held it closed until she could click the lock into place — and it still trembled with the force of someone banging against it again, again, but it stayed sturdy as she backed across the room, eyes scanning for something to help, something to grab —

The door went quiet and still. So did Sansa, listening for the sounds of the heavy boots moving back down the hall, but she couldn’t hear anything over the sound of her own terrified panting. And then there was a sound behind her and she spun, hands poised like claws, ready to attack — but it was only Joff sliding open her window again. 

The air went out of her all at once and she stumbled forward blindly as her boyfriend opened his arms. 

“I heard screaming,” he said, and she buried her face in his chest. “The door was locked. What’s going on?”

“He’s here,” she sniffled as she pulled back, and it was only then she realized how hoarse her voice was. It had been her, the screaming. She hadn’t even realized. Reaching up with one hand to wipe away the tears on her cheek, she held out the other to help guide him into the room. “He’s trying to kill me —”

But as he crawled through the frame, something dropped out of his pocket. A phone. Not Joff’s phone. The case was different. Her mouth fell open, and she froze again as her eyes looked up to meet his. For a second, they just stared at each other. And then she was running again. 

“Sansa — Wait!” he called out, but she was already unlocking the door, sliding into the hallway. “Stop running!” 

She was halfway down the stairs before he was even on the landing, and her feet went out from under her a few steps from the bottom. She cried out and hit the floor hard, but stumbled back to standing soon enough, staggering to the front door. She remembered to yank the chain off this time — the bolt was already disengaged from when she tried earlier to run out the front earlier — but she’d no sooner thrown the door open than she was screaming again and falling back on her hands, eyes locked on the barrel of a gun. 

“Sansa!”

It was only once she heard his voice that her eyes followed the rest of the weapon to the hands holding it, up the arms to the shoulders, up his neck, then locked on his face. 

“Jon,” she whimpered pathetically, and he was quick to aim the gun at the floor instead — and then move it right back up to train on Joffrey when he noticed the other boy on the stairs behind her. 

“Don’t move!” he shouted, his voice coming out low, commanding, and Joff didn't. It was only then that Arya stepped out from behind Jon and scrambled past him, into the room, and to Sansa’s side. 

“Sans!” Arya was already gathering her up in her scrawny arms, but Sansa couldn’t do anymore than tug at her sister’s coat. 

“Call 911,” she begged. 

\--

Cersei kept shooting glares at her from where she sat in the sheriff’s office across the room. Joffrey was seated facing away from her, but Cersei wouldn’t sit for long. She kept standing back up, pacing around the room, gesticulating wildly as she berated Sheriff Mormont. Whenever her eyes caught Sansa’s, she looked fit to burst into flames with her anger, but Sansa couldn’t stop staring. 

“We can’t reach Robb,” Jon said, and she finally snapped her attention back to him as he slid into his seat at the desk before her. 

“He’s not answering his phone?”

“It’s not even ringing,” he answered, grimacing. “Are you sure he’d have service in the Riverlands? Maybe his provider isn’t covered well there. Do you have your uncle’s number?”

“At home,” she sniffed. “Robb left it on the table. I had it in my phone, but that’s at home, too. Probably smashed.”

“We’ll find him, Sansa.” As he stood back up, he reached out to place what she was sure was meant to be a reassuring hand on her shoulder. His palm was warm, but his words didn’t feel very reassuring. “Don’t worry.”

A few minutes later, Arya was back and dropping the bags Sansa had packed at her feet — and a broken phone onto the desk. 

“Jon will probably need that for evidence,” she said grimly. “Not that it looks like it still works, but maybe their tech guys can figure something out. But, anyway, he said we can leave whenever you’re ready. He’s still gonna take us back to his place, but they’ll have a car outside, too.” 

Sansa nodded. “Alright.” She took a moment to gather her composure with a shaky breath, then pushed herself to standing. “Then let’s go now.”

“Jon!” Arya hollered across the room, not even flinching when several other officers whipped their heads around to look in her direction, including Jon, who raised a single eyebrow at her. “Deputy Snow!” she tried again, exasperated but no less loud, and she smirked when he gave in and started walking over to them. 

“Ready?” he asked. 

“Ready,” Sansa said — and she thought she meant it until they stepped outside. Jon had taken them out the side door to avoid the reporters that had gathered out front, but she wasn’t prepared for Margaery and her cameraman to emerge out of the darkness, flicking on the bright lights of their equipment. 

“Hello, Sansa,” Margaery trilled, and Sansa felt her shoulders rise practically to her ears. “Some night. Are you alright?”

Sansa didn’t say anything. Arya stepped in front of her. 

“She’s not answering any questions,” she spit with a glare. “Just leave us alone, OK?”

But the gleam in Margaery’s eyes at Arya’s anger had Sansa remembering just how the reporter got when she thought she smelled blood in the water. 

“It’s OK, Arya,” she said instead in her best soothing tone. “She’s just doing her job. Right, Marg?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Margaery answered, shooting Arya a smug look. 

“Speaking of — how’s the book?”

“It’ll be out later this year.” 

Sansa’s stomach twisted, but she gave her best approximation of a smile. “I’ll look for it.”

Margaery grinned. “I’ll send you a copy.”

But the flash of Margaery’s brilliantly white teeth set something off in her, and before Sansa knew it she had stepped forward, balled her hand into a fist, and slammed it into Margaery’s perfect, beautiful face. 

\--

“God, I can’t stop thinking about it,” Arya gushed, wearing just a pair of boy’s boxers and a ribbed tank top as she lounged on the pull out couch. “‘I’ll send you a copy,’” she mimicked in her best impression of Margaery’s voice. “Then, bam! Bitch went down. ‘I’ll send you a copy.’ Bam! Sans — super bitch!”

Across the room, Jon was rifling through his freezer before he settled on a bag of peas. “Thought you might want something cold for that right hook,” he said, and he was smiling too as he brought the frozen veggies over. “We’ll have to teach you how to throw a real punch, but that was pretty good.”

Sansa gave them a watery smile but didn't quite have it in her to match their enthusiastic energy, and she didn’t bother trying once Jon disappeared back into his bedroom. Once the lights were low and she and Arya were both snuggled up under the covers, she couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to touch her sister’s elbow. 

“I’m worried about Robb,” she whispered. 

“Robb’s fine,” Arya assured her, but she was so good at lying these days that Sansa couldn’t tell if she really meant it. “I’m sure he was just at some boring college presentation — or maybe a party or something. We’ll call again in the morning.”

Sansa _hmmed_ and rolled onto her back, eyes searching for designs in the popcorn ceiling overhead. 

“Do you really think Joff did it?” she asked after another few minutes, her voice small. 

“He was there, Sans,” Arya said, her own tone softer and more patient than Sansa could’ve ever expected. “And you know he’s not exactly a good guy anyway.”

Sansa did. But she didn’t think — Being a bad boyfriend was one thing. But being a killer?

On the side table, the screen of Arya’s phone lit up where it was charging. A blocked number was calling. _Robb!_ Sansa thought and lunged for it. Maybe his phone had gotten smashed, too, or lost, and that’s why it wasn’t ringing. Maybe he was calling from someone else’s to let them know he’d gotten in safely. “Robb?” she asked, breathless, as Arya sat up in bed beside her, but the color drained out of Sansa’s voice at the raspy voice coming through the other end. 

“Hello, Sansa.”

She let out a strangled cry, and Arya was already halfway across the apartment, banging at Jon’s bedroom door. 

“Poor Joffrey Baratheon. An innocent guy doesn’t stand a chance with you,” the caller taunted. 

“Leave me alone,” she moaned. They weren’t done. 

“Looks like you fingered the wrong guy… again.”

“Who are you?” She meant to sound demanding, but her voice wasn’t as strong as she would’ve liked it. 

Jon stormed across the room, hand reaching out towards her. “Give me the phone,” he told her in his low, man-of-the-law voice, and her fingers clenched around it. He changed tactics. “It’s OK, Sansa,” he coaxed. “Give me the phone.” 

“Who are you?” she asked again, but this time it came out more pleading than anything else. 

“Don’t worry. You’ll find out soon enough, I promise. This is gonna be fun, Sansa. Just like old times.” And then there was only silence on the other side of the line. 

\--

It wasn’t Joffrey. The walkie-talkie Jon wore strapped to the shoulder of his uniform crackled to life while they were eating breakfast, an operator on the other line letting him know that “the Baratheon kid” was being released in a few minutes. Her boyfriend had apparently been in custody all night long, no matter how much Cersei had screamed and raged and demanded he be let go. But when they’d checked his phone, they hadn’t found any calls or texts to Sansa on it. And it was his phone. Apparently, he’d just gotten a new case. 

She could tell Arya was watching her carefully to see how she responded, but she kept her focus solely on her plate. Despite exhausting herself with her crying jag on Jon's shoulder as he awkwardly patted her back, Sansa had hardly slept after getting the phone call. Eventually, she’d given up, gotten out of bed, and whipped up omelettes for all of them out of the few spare ingredients in Jon’s fridge. She’d even taken the extra care to make hers an egg white omelette, carefully cracking the eggs and separating them in a bowl. None of that had made her any hungrier, though. She picked at her plate for another moment under Arya’s careful scrutiny, but then she couldn’t stand it for a second longer. 

“Coffee, anyone?” she asked brightly instead, getting up and pushing away from the table. “Should we check the weather?”

She’d had the news playing quietly in the background ever since Arya woke up in an effort to stave off any questions about how she was feeling or doing. It had been an effective buffer, but Jon had turned the sound off once they started to eat. Grabbing the remote, she hit the mute button, realizing only too late that she might’ve thought to change the channel first. 

“...who escaped a vicious attack last night was one of the daughters of Eddard and Catelyn Stark, who were brutally killed last year when convicted murderer Tyrion Lannister broke into their home and savagely tortured the deceased. Tyrion Lanister is currently awaiting appeal for the death sentence handed down after Sansa Stark testified against him. She was the key witness in the state’s prosecution —”

Arya snatched the remote from her and hit the power button. 

“I don’t think you two should go to school today,” Jon said. 

Sansa finally tore her gaze away from the TV, snapping it back to him. “You want us to stay here alone?”

He looked uncomfortable with the question when it was phrased that way. “Well, you’d be together,” he answered. “And I’m sure Sheriff Mormont would keep the officers out front.”

“That didn’t make any difference last night.”

Arya caught the tone in Sansa’s voice and was quick to jump to her big sister’s rescue. “Jon, can’t you just come to school with us?”

He looked guiltily back at her. “I have to do my job, Arya.”

“Your job was being at the school all day yesterday. Just have them put you back on interview duty.”

“You know I’m not in charge of that.”

“What’s the point of being Mormont’s top recruit if you can’t even pick your assignment?” Arya demanded, but Jon didn’t waver under her fierce glare. “Whatever,” she said eventually. “We’re going to school. Sansa would clearly feel better around a bunch of people, and there’s nothing here for us to do other than sit and watch the news, anyway. You don’t even have _Netflix_ , Jon.”

\--

Jon grumbled as he drove them over to The Red Keep, but only told them to be careful as they finally got out of the car. He had done his best to avoid the reporters that were still swarming the front lawn, but Sansa couldn’t stop staring at them across the quad. When she saw Margaery watching her right back, she made up her mind. 

“Stop right there,” the brunette commanded, holding out a manicured finger in warning as Sansa approached. The bruise on her cheek was only faintly visible beneath her foundation, but the swelling was clear to see. 

“I’m not here to fight.”

“Just stay back.”

“I want to talk to you,” Sansa said firmly. 

Margaery snapped her fingers at someone behind her. “Willas. Camera. Now.”

“Off the record,” Arya cut in, slinking up beside her sister. “No cameras.”

“Forget it,” Margaery said and scoffed. 

“Please,” Sansa begged. Then — “You owe me.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“You owe our parents,” Arya snapped. 

Margaery finally looked at her, appraising, and then looked back to Sansa. “Your parents’ murders were last year’s hottest court case. Somebody was going to write about it.”

“And it had to be you? We were friends, Margaery,” Sansa said. “At least, I thought we were.”

The reporter softened slightly. “Look,” she said. “You got what you wanted, didn’t you? Tyrion Lannister is in jail. They’re going to execute him. A book isn’t going to change any of that.”

“Do you still think he’s innocent?”

Margaery’s eyes narrowed as she searched Sansa’s face, but whatever she found there she didn’t seem to mind. “He was convicted in a court of law,” she answered. “Your testimony put him away. It doesn’t really matter what I think.”

“Except for the fact that you did all those stories about Sansa during the trial,” Arya said. “You called her a liar.”

The reporter flicked her eyes back to Arya, annoyed, then forced a more neutral expression back on her face. “I think Sansa falsely identified him,” she said. “Yes.”

“Have you talked to Tyrion?” Sansa challenged. 

Margaery straightened. “Many times.”

“And has his story changed?”

“Not one word. He admits to having a business meeting with your parents at the house, but that’s all.”

“He’s lying,” Sansa insisted. “My dad wouldn’t do business with the Lannisters. Tyrion killed them, and then he butchered them. Their blood was all over his coat.”

“He was drunk that night,” Margaery countered. “He left his coat at your house. The blood was planted, the same way the coat was planted back in his car. Someone framed him. Probably the real person who killed your parents.”

Sansa wavered, then strengthened. “Tyrion murdered my parents. I heard him in the closet when —” She faltered, and Arya reached out to squeeze her hand. “It doesn’t matter. Not even his family believes he’s innocent.”

Tyrion Lannister was Joffrey’s uncle, technically, but the other Lannisters hardly acknowledged his existence these days. Sometimes Sansa thought that accusing her brother of murder was the only thing Cersei actually liked about her. Before the Lannisters spurned him at his trial, Tyrion had become something of an embarrassment to the family, and his sister seemed only too glad to have him locked up for good. 

A few years ago, he’d been well respected as a teacher at The Red Keep Academy, beloved by most of his students even though everyone knew he kept a bottle of whiskey in his desk drawer. Actually, for some, that was probably a big part of why they _did_ love him. But then, when Sansa was a freshman, he’d been caught sleeping with one of the seniors, and his drinking had only gotten worse after he was fired. He’d been arrested on the street for public intoxication on more than one occasion, and he'd also racked up his fair share of DUIs. After his uncle was first charged with the murders, Joff had joked that it was only a matter of time before Tyrion killed someone, though he’d had his bet on vehicular manslaughter. 

Around town, though, there were a few people who believed that he was innocent, especially those who fawned over Margaery Tyrell’s reports, however true or false they clearly were. And Margaery seemed to seize on how Sansa’s voice faltered as if that were exonerating evidence in its own right. 

“You’re not so sure anymore, though, are you?” she asked, eyes lighting up with the realization. 

“It was him,” Sansa insisted. 

“Are you worried the killer’s still on the loose, Sansa? These murders could be related.”

“Alright,” Arya interrupted, and she gave Sansa’s arm a yank in order to march her back up the lawn. “That’s enough for today.”

But Sansa couldn’t help throwing Margaery one last look over her shoulder. “I really am sorry about your face,” she called back.

\--

It turned out Jon had maybe been right about skipping school, though. Sansa had spotted no fewer than four ghostface masks while she walked through the halls. Arya had wanted to stick close to her side, but she had her own classes and books to worry about, and her first period was on the opposite side of campus. Sansa had assured her she’d be fine, but she hadn’t expected to come face to face with — well, with that face. 

By the time she reached her locker, she was thoroughly unnerved. Pulling out her phone, she texted Arya, _What if Margaery was right?_

Arya’s answering message popped up almost immediately. _She’s not. You heard him in the room._ A few seconds later, another appeared beneath it. _Besides, that wasn’t the only evidence. There was also that liquor bottle they found in mom's closet covered in his prints and DNA._

That was true. After all, Sansa may have been familiar enough with Joffrey’s uncle to identify the sounds of his breathing, but she hadn’t actually seen anything. If there hadn’t been physical evidence, there was no way the conviction would’ve stuck. 

_What if it wasn’t him, though,_ she typed back anyway. _If it wasn’t him and it wasn’t Joff, then it could be anyone, right?_

She jumped when someone grabbed her by the shoulder — and then she lurched back another step when she turned and saw that it was Joffrey himself. 

“We need to talk,” he said. 

Suddenly, Theon was beside her, for once not slouching. Joff was tall, but standing up straight, Theon was taller. “You know,” he said, “if I were accused of carving up two people, I’d take the opportunity to skip school.”

Joffrey glared. “I didn't do it. Fuck off, Greyjoy.”

“I don’t think I will, Baratheon.”

“Sansa,” Joffrey snapped, voice hard as a whip crack. “The police checked my phone. You can’t really be stupid enough to think it was still me, can you?”

She flinched, Theon shouldered his way in front of her, and she reached out to snag a fistful his sleeve. Robb’s best friend — well, his best friend other than Jon, at least — had never been that close with her, but he was also never afraid to pick a fight, particularly when it came to Joffrey. As if on instinct, she pulled him back a step, prepared as ever to play peacemaker. “It’s fine,” she said. “Just — Will you give us a minute? Just a minute.”

Theon gaped at her, then rolled his eyes. “Whatever,” he huffed. “I’ll see you in French.”

Alone in the hallway, or near enough, she couldn’t bring herself to meet Joffrey’s eyes again. After things nearly came to blows with Theon, though, it seemed he was ready to play sweet, too. 

“Sansa,” he said, voice velvet this time. “You have to know it wasn’t me.”

“I know,” she agreed, dropping her face into her hands, and he instantly stepped forward to wrap his arms around her. “It’s just… Gods, Joff, someone was there, someone tried to kill me.”

“I believe you,” he said, and his voice rumbled through his chest where she leaned against it. “Sheriff Mormont said I must’ve scared him off, that I probably saved your life.”

The metallic glint of the knife was still bright in her mind’s eye, and she burrowed deeper into the front of her boyfriend’s shirt. Weakly, she admitted, “There was another call last night. On Arya’s phone, back when we were at Jon’s.”

“See?” Joff grabbed her by the shoulders, holding her far enough away that he could see her face. “It obviously wasn’t me, then. Thanks to your brother’s friend, I was at the police station all night. I had to sleep on a fucking table in an interrogation room, Sansa.”

She whimpered. “Gods, Joff. I’m sorry.”

He nodded, relaxed his hold, and let her lean back in to rest her cheek against his shoulder. “It’s fine,” he dismissed, though there was a clear note of bitterness in his tone. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that my girlfriend would rather accuse me of being a psychopathic killer than touch me.”

“You know that’s not true,” she countered, and he tilted his neck back to rest his chin on the top of her head. 

“Then what is it? Are you seeing somebody else?”

“ _No_ , Joffrey, there isn’t anyone else.” She took a deep breath, then nuzzled her nose against the skin at the neckline of his shirt, determined to offer at least some small sign of affection. “It’s just — it’s just me. I need time. I’m still … adjusting, after everything that happened with my parents.”

He pulled away again. “It’s been a year since then, Sansa,” he argued disbelievingly. 

“Tomorrow,” she clarified. “It’ll be a year tomorrow.”

He let out his own sigh, dropping his arms. “When are you gonna let that go, Sansa? My dad died last year, too, and I just accepted it. This is the way it is. He’s not coming back.”

She stiffened. “Your dad had a car accident,” she protested. “It’s not the same thing. He wasn’t practically beheaded —”

“You need to move on.”

It felt like he’d slapped her. She took a step back, then another, wrapping her arms around herself as she turned on her heel to head down the hallway the same way Theon had gone. “I’m glad you’re coping so well with your life, Joff, but not all of us are so perfect,” she said stiffly, pausing only for a moment. “Some of us are just trying to keep our heads above water.”

\--

The rest of the day went no better. Between second and third period, she spotted three more ghostface masks, and while she was in a stall in the bathroom, she overheard two girls from her gym class walk in and start talking about her. She had just wanted a moment to herself, away from the crowds in the hall and any creepy costumes, but now she was stuck until the girls left. 

“She was never attacked,” one of the girls — Elinor, Sansa thought her name was, or maybe that was Alla — said and leaned towards the mirror to fix her lipstick. “I think she made it all up.”

“Why would she lie about it?” the other girl, Megga, asked skeptically. 

“For attention. The girl has some serious issues.”

A year and change earlier, girls like Elinor and Alla never would’ve dared talk about her like this. Then again, that was when Sansa had still been popular. 

“What if she did it?” Elinor-Alla suggested eagerly as if the idea had just come to her. “What if Sansa killed Daenerys and Viserys?”

“And why would she do that?”

“Maybe she was hot for Dany’s new older boyfriend and killed her in a jealous rage. And then Dany’s brother caught her and she had to kill him, too.”

Megga scoffed. “Why would Sansa want to be with Drogo? She has her own boyfriend, and Joff is the hottest guy in this school.”

“Fine,” Elinor-Alla said, her voice taking on a tone of impatience at her theory being rebuffed. “Then maybe it was a mercy kill. Everyone always said how awful the Targaryens' dad was, and you know what the Starks are like. Their dad was always so judgmental of everyone else, and she’s just like him with her nose up in the air all the time.”

“Cut her some slack, Alla, gods. She saw her parents all butchered.”

“Yeah, and it fucked her up royally. Think about it. It makes perfect sense. Her parents’ death left her distraught and hostile at a cruel and inhumane world, she’s disillusioned, where are the gods, et cetera. Just completely suicidal. And then one day she snaps. She wants to kill herself but realizes teen suicide is out this year. Homicide is a much healthier therapeutic expression.”

Megga laughed. “Where do you get this shit?”

“Lady Melisandre,” Alla shot back, and both girls giggled as they finally headed back out into the hall. 

If she’d managed to eat anything at breakfast, Sansa felt sure she would’ve puked it up. Instead, she unlocked the stall and went to the sink, washing her hands just for something to do. For good measure, she wet a paper towel and pressed it to her forehead, the back of her neck, her flaming cheeks. 

“Sansa…”

The whisper came from one of the stalls behind her, and she spun around to face them. The doors were all closed, but there were no feet visible beneath the walls. The bathroom had been empty when she came in, at least she was pretty sure it was, and it hadn’t sounded like anyone else walked in at the same time that Alla and Megga walked out, but then there it was again. 

“Sansa…”

As silently as she could, she crept towards the door, but then she saw it. Two black boots slowly lowering to the ground in the nearest stall. Her heart went into overdrive, and suddenly she didn’t care how quiet she was anymore, she just needed to get out, but as soon as she started panting, running, her sneakers slapping the tile, whoever was in the stall burst out of it, their face hidden behind a ghostface mask. 

They were standing between her and the exit, and she could see the glint of something (a knife?) in their gloved hand, but all she could think was _Bride Wars, tackle them like Anne Hathaway in Bride Wars_ , and she didn’t slow or dodge before she went flying into them, her momentum knocking them both to the ground. They rolled a few times, the knife skittering away, but Sansa ended up on top, and then she was shoving herself to her feet, grabbing the door handle for dear life, and throwing it open as she stumbled into the hallway. There were a few students milling around outside, but she couldn’t recognize them, their faces blurring through her tears, and she just kept going. 

\--

By the time Arya collected her from Mr. Arryn’s office, she’d nearly managed to finish weeping. The principal had made an announcement over the intercom system that he was cancelling classes for the rest of the day and sending everyone home. It was already Friday, and it was clear nobody was paying attention to classes with everything going on. Add in masked assailants in the halls — no matter how much Mr. Arryn had tried to reassure her that it was only a prank, that no real killers would be able to get to her on campus, she knew that had been the same person who attacked her last night — and it was all just too much. 

Theon met the two of them in the parking lot behind the gym, car doors already open and waiting for the sisters to climb in. None of them said much as he flipped on the radio, letting the sound of some angry rock music fill the car. Once they’d been on the road for a few minutes, he finally turned it down. 

“Do you know what you need, San?” he asked. “What you need is to get fucking wasted. We should have a party.”

Sansa sniffed. 

“I hate to say it, but that’s actually not the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” Arya added from the backseat. “Jon is working a double with everything going on, and it would probably be nice to be around a bunch of people.”

“That’s what I thought about coming to school.”

“Sure,” Arya agreed, “but I left you alone, and that’s my bad. We won’t make that mistake again. Wherever you go, I go, too. Is that clear? If you pee, I pee.”

Sansa let out a watery laugh. There was probably a 50/50 shot that Arya would sneak off to makeout with Gendry at some point, but if other people were there… 

“So you’re in?” Theon asked, taking his eyes off the road just long enough to glance over at her. “Come on, you know Asha’s never home. We’ll have the place to ourselves, and Jon can pick you up when he gets off work. It’ll be just like my hurricane bash last year. Nothing too extreme, but a few of us, plenty of booze. We’ll get you liquored up enough to forget there’s some kind of homicidal maniac after you.”

Arya kicked his seat. 

“C’mon, San. Say yes.”

She squirmed in her seat, held her breath, then finally let it all out in one big _whoosh_. “Fine,” she said. 

“Great,” Theon grinned, “because I already invited everyone else.”

\--

“Everyone else,” as it turned out, really did seem to include just about everyone else. Theon had promised an intimate affair, but it looked like half the senior and junior classes had shown. Granted, they lived in a small town, they went to a small school, but still, as the party continued to fill up, there were more people than Sansa expected. Even Bran came waltzing through the door with Jojen, his arms filled with grocery bags of snacks. 

“No,” Arya said immediately when she saw him.

“Aw, c’mon,” Bran argued. 

“Absolutely not. No freshmen allowed. You have to pay your dues just like the rest of us misfits did.”

“Sansa went to parties when she was a freshman!”

“Sansa was a cheerleader when she was a freshman. They don’t have to live by normal people’s rules.”

“Theon said I could come if we brought food,” Bran pleaded, desperate, just as Theon walked by and plucked the bags out of his arms. 

“I believe I said, ‘Bring food,’” he clarified without stopping to chat, tossing the rest of his words over one shoulder. “I didn’t say anything about you two losers staying.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Life isn’t fair,” Arya said. “Go back to Jojen’s house. Maybe next year you’ll be cool enough to go to an upperclassmen party.”

“You’re only a sophomore!” Bran protested.

“Yeah, well, I’m fucking cool.”

It had taken a little more finagling than that, but eventually Jojen’s older sister, Meera, returned in her car to pick him and Bran up and take them back to the Reed’s. 

“Be safe!” Arya yelled after them, snickering. 

After they’d seen the boys off, Arya linked their arms together and marched them back into the kitchen. 

“You,” she said, “need a beer.”

Sansa didn’t like beer, but she also wasn’t too sold on the getting-sloppy-drunk concept, so she accepted the bottle when Arya opened it and passed it along. After lifting it to her mouth, she held a small sip behind her lips, swishing it around before she finally swallowed. 

“Joffrey’s right, you know,” she admitted eventually. 

Arya squawked out a noise that was very clearly a disagreement. “Uh, no,” she said after taking a gulp of her own beer. “But continue.”

“I only mean he’s right about the sex stuff. Whenever he touches me, I just can’t relax.”

Arya frowned sympathetically. “So you’ve got a few intimacy issues. It’s no big deal. And you can hardly blame yourself after what a fucko he was about mom and dad’s death. But you’ll thaw out eventually.”

“He’s been so patient with me, though. It’s been a year. How many other guys would put up with a girlfriend who’s practically celibate?”

“Sansa,” Arya said seriously, reaching out to grab her sister’s hand and catch her eye. “Joffrey and his penis don’t deserve you. And when the right guy comes along, I promise you, you’ll practically melt.”

She flushed under the weight of her sister’s gaze, but Arya held it until Sansa finally nodded. Still, she couldn’t help herself. 

“Do you think Theon invited him tonight?”

“I’d say not if he knows what’s good for him, but Theon pretty much never knows what’s good for him. That said, those two cockroaches seem to hate each other’s guts, so — probably not?”

As if he’d been summoned, though, Joff abruptly appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, leaning against the frame. 

“Really, Sansa? We got in one fight, and you’re just not going to invite me when you decide to throw a party? Is that it for us, then?”

“It’s not our party, it’s Theon’s,” Arya bit back. “And you’d better not let him see you here. Apparently he came pretty close to kicking your ass earlier. I wouldn’t give him an excuse to draw blood.”

Joff narrowed his eyes at her, sneering. “As if I couldn’t take Greyjoy.” He looked back to Sansa. “It doesn’t matter, though. I’m not here for him, and I’m not staying. I just want to talk. Let’s go upstairs for a few minutes.”

“No, sorry,” Arya cut in before Sansa had time to even consider her response. “We’re party buddies tonight. Anything you need to say to my sister you can say in front of me.”

Ignoring the intrusion, he softened his gaze as he looked at Sansa. “Please?” he asked. “Just a few minutes, and then I’ll go. I just want to say sorry for earlier. I know I was being a fucking dick.”

Joffrey never apologized — and he really never said please. She felt her heart go gooey, and she looked over at Arya with moon-eyes until her sister gritted her teeth and gave in. 

“Fine,” Arya said. “But scream if you need me. Seriously, just scream, and I’ll be up those stairs so fast that Joffrey won’t know what hit him.”

“Thank you,” Sansa breathed, and swooped forward to press a kiss to her sister’s cheek. When Joff held out a hand for her, she took it and let him lead her to one of the bedrooms upstairs. 

\--

Of course, once they were behind closed doors, it was clear talking wasn’t the only thing Sansa’s boyfriend had in mind. Unlike in her room a few nights earlier, though, he was gentle, tucking a lock of hair behind one ear and leaning in slowly after he sat them down on the bed. His lips just barely brushed hers, whisper soft, and then he ducked back in for another kiss, this one longer, lingering, and she could feel herself warming from the tips of her toes all the way to the top of her head. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally said when she was breathless, jelly next to him. 

“No, I’m sorry,” she managed. “Gods, Joff, you were right. I’ve just been so caught up in my own stuff that I haven’t even been thinking about you. But I want to. I want to think about you all the time.”

Her voice grew shy at the end, but he seemed to catch her meaning, his eyes sparkling back at her. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s like you said, I need to move on. I think in some weird, analytical, psychological BS way I was scared that what people said about my parents was right, that they were so judgmental of everyone. It made me feel like I had to be perfect, always do the right thing, and I didn’t know what that was with you — but now I know that it doesn’t matter.”

He leaned in and kissed her again, and she let him for a moment before pulling away, not quite finished. 

“I just felt like my mom and dad were always watching me, I guess. Like every time I close my eyes, they were right there, haunting me. I know it doesn’t really make any sense.”

“It makes sense, it just sounds like some _Silence of the Lambs_ type shit.”

“I don’t want my life to be a scary movie,” she whispered. “All I want is a rom com.”

Joffrey smirked. “You don’t always have to be a good girl, Sansa. You can just let me make you feel good.”

She hesitated, but when he leaned in to press his lips to her pulse point, she felt her heart _thump_. “OK,” she said in a skittering voice. “I’ll let you make me feel good.”

\--

It hadn’t been what she expected, exactly. She wasn’t sure what she expected — things always faded to black in the movies — but that was… What even was it? Fine? Disappointing? Was this how Kate Hudson’s characters felt in all of her films? Joff had seemed to like it plenty, but once he rolled off of her she just felt… tired, and not in a satisfying, melt-into-the-pillows sort of way. 

She'd pulled her clothes back on quickly, shy again once it was all over, but Joffrey was taking his time getting dressed. As her boyfriend slipped his shirt back over his head, tugged his pants back up his legs, she couldn’t help but let her mind wander… and then something occurred to her. 

“Joff?” He didn’t answer. “Who did you call?”

That made him pause, but then he continued lacing one shoe back up. “When?”

“When you were arrested. The cops are supposed to give you one phone call, right? Who did you call?”

He flashed a look at her like she was dumb. “I called my mom, Sansa,” he said slowly. 

But that wasn’t right. “No, Sheriff Mormont called your mom. I heard him say so over the radio when Jon was driving me and Arya to the station. So who did you call?”

He jammed his other foot into his remaining shoe. “Gods, Sansa, you don’t still think it was me?”

“No,” she rushed to reassure him. “I just was wondering —”

He stood, spinning around to face her straight on. “What do I have to do to prove to you I’m not a killer?” he demanded, but suddenly his wasn’t the only face she was looking at. The ghostface mask loomed in the darkness behind him, and her lungs felt empty, raw, she couldn’t catch her breath —

“Joff —” she wheezed, but it was too late. The knife flashed in the air next to his head, and just as he turned to see what she was looking at, it caught him full in the shoulder, blood spraying, then in the stomach, then again —

“Run,” he told her, and then the knife plunged into his chest and no more sound came out other than a rattling gasp. 

\--

Sansa didn’t know how long they’d been up in the bedroom (not that long, surely), but it sounded like the rest of the party was pretty much all gone as she burst into the hallway. The only sound she could hear was her own labored breathing, the footsteps behind her, and the TV blaring downstairs. 

The stairs — she should go for the stairs — but a hand reached out and grabbed a fistful of her hair before she could make it, wrenching her back. She stumbled with the force of it and Ghostface let go, standing between her and the stairs, the knife gleaming with Joffrey’s blood — 

She turned and ran the other way, heaving herself through the nearest doorway, slamming it shut behind her. There was no lock on it, though, and she knew she was cursing, crying, but she couldn’t hear any of it over the sound of the blood rushing in her ears. She was in Theon’s room, she had to be, and she threw her weight against the door as her eyes searched for something heavy she could shove up against it. She jumped as Ghostface _thumped_ hard against the other side of the door, then screamed as the blade of the knife came splintering through the wood. 

There was a chair, a chair at Theon’s desk, if she could just reach — She braced the door with her foot, stretched her long limbs as far as she could, her fingertips just brushing the back of the seat. The door shuddered behind her, springing open a few inches before she managed to kick it back closed, and in the moment whenever whoever was on the other side must’ve been winding up for another hit, her fingers scrabbled around the wood with enough purchase to pull it towards her and jam it under the knob. This time, the door shuddered again, but didn’t budge. 

Only now she was trapped, and was that any better? They were still on the second floor, and there were no other doors in the room, only a curtain sectioning off a narrow closet area. The window, then, she’d have to go out the window. She shoved the pane up, pushed the screen to the ground below, leaned halfway out. It would be a bad fall, but did she have any other choice?

Bran used to always climb trees, would drop himself out of them and land on his feet like a cat, nimble. She could do that, too, couldn’t she? It would be like a stunt, like a cheerleading stunt. If she just landed right, knees bent, they would absorb the shock and then she could run. The door shuddered again, and Sansa knew she couldn’t waste anymore time. She lifted one leg through the empty panel then ducked her head through, holding onto both sides of the frame to steady herself. Careful, balanced on the edge, she swung her other leg out and heard the door behind her slam open against the wall. 

In _Runaway Bride_ , Julia Roberts’s character climbed out of a window to escape exchanging vows at the altar. She was on the ground floor, she just needed to step out onto the grass, but Sansa could do this. In _A Little Princess_ , Sara had to crawl out of a window way higher than a second story, had to risk falling and breaking into a million pieces on the ground below so that she could balance beam her way across a single plank of wood. That was way scarier than this, and Sara was only a kid. Sansa just had to jump. She just had to jump! She jumped. 

\--

There was nowhere left to go but back to the house, and the thought made Sansa sob out loud. The killer was still out there, Joff was dead, and he wasn’t the only one. When she’d run out towards the road, she’d spotted Jon’s squad car — empty, dark — and Margaery’s news van and thought the light on inside meant salvation, but Willas had no sooner opened the door for her, let her in, than they spotted Ghostface on the video feed he had in the car. Margaery had snuck into the party at some point, apparently, had hidden a camera in the main room where everyone had curled up to watch some horror flick Theon had put on earlier. 

The problem was, Ghostface hadn’t been alone in the house. Arya had been there, too, and Sansa’s heart had seized in her chest at the sight of it. “It’s on a 30-second delay,” Willas had whispered, the words sending chills down her spine, but nearly as soon as he opened the van door to rush inside he’d frozen, eyes trained on the house's now open front door. And then Ghostface was right in front of him, knife flashing forward to slice open Willas’s throat, and Sansa was screaming, flailing backwards until she knocked a shelf over, and suddenly there was a clear path out the back of the van, and she dove through it, a hand catching her shoe but she kicked it off, half barefoot when she hit the pavement. 

She aimed for the woods on the side of the road, kept running, but they were too far away from the rest of town, there was nowhere to go. She’d thought that was it, and then she’d seen the headlights, thrown herself back into the road, arms over her head, but it was just Margaery in the same news van, tires screeching along the asphalt, and when she saw Sansa in the street she swerved, lost control of the wheel, slammed into a tree. Joffrey, Willas, Margaery — all dead, and Arya was back there —

Maybe Jon was there, maybe someone had heard the screaming and called the cops. If his car was there, maybe that meant he was inside, maybe he and Arya were together. Even if they were both gone (and she didn’t want to think about what that would mean), at least she could use the radio in his car, grab someone’s phone in the house. She crept quietly back through the trees, or at least as quietly as she was able. She couldn’t get her breathing back under control. Every gasp of air felt like a knife to the chest as the house came back into view. 

And then she saw him. Jon, standing in the open front doorway, one hand grasping the frame, the other on his gun at his hip. 

“Jon!” she sobbed, and she sprinted the rest of the way without any concern for her one naked foot, for whatever sound she was making. She took the steps up to the porch two at a time and threw herself into his arms, but he gasped and stumbled with the force of her, the hand on the door frame only barely keeping them both on her feet. He lurched forward as he tried to counterbalance and she staggered and fell to her knees as he sagged against her. 

“Jon,” she moaned, “Jon, please,” but then he let out a strange gurgling noise and she felt something slice the side of her hand. There was a knife in his back. The blade was buried deep, the handle sticking out. He went limp, and she crumpled under his weight, sinking to the wood of the porch beside him, lowering him as gently as she could. 

His hand twitched by his gun again, then reached for hers. 

“I’m here, Jon,” she promised, tears blurring her vision. “It’s OK, I’m here.”

He didn’t say anything, but he pulled her hand to his hip, placed it on the weapon — and she understood. Her hands trembled as she pulled the gun from the holster, the metal thing shockingly heavy in her hands. She held it tight as she shakily pushed herself back to her feet. She couldn’t help Jon, but Arya might still be inside, and even if she wasn’t, if she’d gotten out of the house somehow, she’d still need the police, maybe an ambulance. 

Sansa’s mind was whirling, buzzing with terror as she inched towards the doorway to the house, but there was no one in sight, nothing she could hear. She locked the door behind her, eyes frantically looking for a phone, a landline, someone’s cell. 

“Sansa,” someone croaked, and her eyes snapped to the top of the stairs. Joffrey! It was Joffrey, one hand clutched to his chest, his shirt soaked with blood. He stumbled on the first few steps, and she surged up to meet him halfway, to help ease him down the rest. 

“Joff,” she wept, “Joff, I thought you were dead.”

“Gun,” he whimpered. “Sansa, give me the gun.”

She handed it over, only too eager to be rid of it, of its weight in her grip, and then they were both spinning at the sound of the doorknob rattling violently, the door shaking in its frame but the deadbolt holding it in place. 

Joff raised the gun, pointed it at the door. “Open it,” he told her, but she just looked at him with wide, wet eyes. “Sansa!” he shouted, then doubled over, the hand on his chest squeezing into a fist before it relaxed again, palm pressed over where he’d been stabbed. “We have the gun! We’re gonna be fine! Now open it!” 

On the other side of the wood, she could hear another voice — and gods, it was Arya’s. She rushed to throw the lock back, swinging the door open only to be met with the sight of her blood-streaked little sister, a wound weeping under her hairline, sweat and muck sticking her shirt to her skin. But she was alive, standing, strong, and Sansa jerked back out of the way to let Arya in and then shoved the door shut behind her. 

“Jon,” Arya rasped, voice cracking as her eyes darted around the room. “He’s — and Theon, fuck, Theon has gone fucking crazy —” 

“He’s not the only one,” Joff said, and then the gunshot rang out and Arya dropped to the carpet. 

Sansa rushed to her side, wordless with horror, but when her eyes found Joffrey’s he just smiled, lifted a bloody finger to his mouth, and sucked it between his lips. 

“Corn syrup,” he said, smirking as he pulled his hand away with a wet pop. “Same stuff they use in all those movies you hate to watch.”

It didn’t make sense, Sansa didn’t understand, but she lurched to her feet, stepping back — and Theon’s hands came up to grasp her arms. She spun to face him, her own fists balling in the front of his shirt. 

“Theon,” she gasped, but something wasn’t right. His eyes weren’t on her, they were beyond her, and Arya’s warning slowly started to sink in when he pulled a phone from his pocket. He clicked an app, spoke into it, and the raspy voice from the phone calls echoed back. 

“Surprise, San,” he said around a grin, finally looking back down at her. 

She edged away, comprehension dawning, but they’d already backed her into the kitchen, one on either side as they cornered her against the sink. 

“It’s all part of the game, Sansa,” Joffrey taunted. “It’s called guess how I’m gonna die.”

“Fuck you,” she spat, tremulous, but he just laughed. 

“We already played that game, remember? You lost.”

He handed the gun to Theon, who passed him a knife in turn. 

“Why are you doing this,” she whimpered. “They’ll catch you.”

“Will they?” Joff asked. “Tell that to my uncle. You wouldn’t believe how easy he was to frame.”

“Watch a few movies, take a few notes,” Theon added lightly. “It was fun.”

“You don’t even like each other,” Sansa gasped, trying to make sense of it all, trying to wrap her head around it. 

“So? We don’t need to be friends to agree that you Starks needed to be taken down a peg.”

“Why?” It felt like the room was spinning around her. She couldn’t quite focus on them. Her hands reached behind her to clutch the sink in a desperate attempt to stay on her feet. “Why did you kill my parents?”

Theon laughed. “Why? Why? You hear that, Baratheon, I think she wants a motive.”

“I don’t really believe in motives, Sansa,” Joff answered. “I mean, did the Others have a motive? Did they ever really explain why the Skagosi like to eat people? Don’t think so.” He raised the knife to her neck, grazing the tip of the blade along the underside of her chin. “See, it’s a lot scarier when there’s no motive, Sansa.”

“We did your parents a favor, San,” Theon chimed in. “Your mother was so tightly wound she could have eaten coal and shat out a diamond, and your father thought he was so fucking high and mighty, so we brought him down — a full six feet under.”

“We put them out of their misery, Sansa. I mean, let’s face it, neither of them were exactly saints.”

“Is that motive enough for you?” Theon asked, suddenly falling serious. “Or how about this? Your parents were the ones who got me taken away from my dad. It was their fault I spent years hopping around foster homes before Asha finally came home and stepped up to the plate.”

Sansa swallowed. She knew about Theon’s father, but her parents had helped Theon, had saved him, Robb told her. “But my dad —”

“Your dad ruined my fucking life, San. And just think about it. On the off chance I do get caught, a motive like that could divide a jury for years, don’t you think? You took my parents. I took yours. Fair’s fair. And thanks to your dad, I can blame that ‘traumatic’ home life I grew up in. Just look what trauma’s done to you in the past year, San. It fucked you up. It made you have sex with a psychopath that you don’t even like.”

Cold washed over Sansa. She felt like she might faint. 

“Unfortunately, that means you’re no longer a virgin, Sansa,” Joff purred, slipping his arms around her, pulling her back flush with his chest. His breath stirred the hair at her temple, the knife still at her throat. “Even you have to know what they say about horror movies. Once you fuck, you’re fucked. Just pretend it’s a slasher, Sansa. How do you think it’s gonna end?”

“Oh!” Theon shouted suddenly, a laugh tumbling off his lips. “Oh, you’re gonna love this. We’ve got another surprise for you, San. You’re gonna love this one.”

He disappeared into the pantry, then staggered back out of it a second later, his back to her, something heavy in his arms — and when he turned, he dropped something — someone — at her feet. His legs and arms were bound with duct tape, but his blue eyes were wide as he stared up at her.

“Robb,” she moaned, and her knees really did buckle then, Joffrey’s arm tightening around her waist to hold her up. 

“Pay attention, Sansa, this is the best part,” Joffrey whispered, his mouth warm against her ear. “Why do you think we kept your big brother alive for so long? Why did we save you for last?”

“You know what time it is?” Theon asked, his eyes gleaming. “It’s after midnight now. It’s the anniversary. We killed your parents exactly one year ago today.” He pulled the phone from earlier back out of his pants and leaned over to tuck it into the front pocket of Robb’s shirt.

“He’s the chief suspect. We cloned his phone. It’s got all kinds of fucked up apps on it now, too. The evidence is all right there.”

“You know, I thought Robb would let me come live with you guys for a while,” Theon continued, voice cold again. “But there are five of you — were five of you — and you already had Jon. I guess the house was just full up. But that’s OK, because Robb here isn’t exactly the savior I thought he was once. After all, he snapped, San. With the anniversary of your parents’ death coming up, it was all just too much for him. He went on a murder spree, killing everyone.”

“Except for Greyjoy and me,” Joff huffed a laugh, his breath hot on her cheek. “We were just left for dead. Do you get it yet, Sansa? Do you see where this is going?” He released her, shoving her forward, and she stumbled as she tried not to trip over Robb. She dropped to her knees, her hands scrambling at the duct tape — and then the sound of a wet _squelch_ had her eyes snapping back up. 

The knife was buried half-way into Theon’s stomach. “Fuck,” he hissed, and then he tugged it back out. The dark stain where the blade went in was spreading rapidly, and his hands were slippery on the handle as he turned it around. “My turn.” Another wet _squelch_ , and this time the weapon jutted out from Joffrey’s side, but Theon pulled it back quickly, shoved it forward a second time. _Squelch._

Sansa could feel the bile rising in her throat, hot and acidic, scorching her insides, but there was nowhere to go. 

Joffrey had the knife now, and he jabbed it forward, driving it in further than he had the first time, and the impact had Theon doubling over. He wound back up, reached forward to slash again, and Theon stumbled back in an attempt to get out of the way, but Joffrey just took a step closer.

“You sick fucks,” she whispered, her stomach roiling. “You’ve seen too many movies.”

Joffrey laughed and took another thrust. “Don’t be stupid, Sansa,” he lectured. “Movies don’t create psychos. Movies just make psychos more creative.” He pulled his arm back as if to strike again, but Theon weakly batted his hand away.

“Gods, enough,” he complained. “I’m getting woozy here.”

“Get the gun,” Joffrey told him, taking charge. “I’ll untie your little friend.”

Theon staggered across the room at the same time Sansa crawled in front of Robb, putting her body between his and Joffrey’s. Her eyes met her boyfriend's but the knife was still in his hand, she hesitated, and then —

“Where is it?” Theon whined. “What happened to it?”

Both of them snapped their heads towards Theon. 

“Where’d it go?” he continued. 

Margaery stepped through the doorway from the entry room, the gun in her hand. “It’s right here, asshole,” she hissed. 

Both Theon and Joffrey moved toward her, their backs to Sansa. 

“I thought she was dead,” Joffrey said as Sansa silently helped Robb to his feet. 

“She looked dead,” Theon said, and Sansa wound an arm around her brother’s waist, inched them backwards towards the other door, the one that led to the dining room. “She still does.”

“I’ve got an ending for you,” Margaery said, jaw set, determinedly not looking at Sansa and Robb as they made their slow escape. “The reporter left for dead in the news van comes to, stumbles upon you two cretins, finds the gun, fumbles your plan, and saves the day.”

As the two Stark siblings slipped around the corner, Sansa heard a rush of activity, but couldn’t see what was happening. All she could do was use the sound as cover as she helped Robb hop towards the closest closet, the _thump_ of his feet disguised by the commotion near the front of the house. She tugged the door shut behind them, held her breath. There was a door slam, murmurs, silence, then —

“Where’d they go? Where the fuck did they go?”

She hadn’t heard a gunshot, and that meant either Margaery hadn’t pulled the trigger or hadn’t gotten the chance. Sansa couldn’t stay in here, couldn’t wait it out hoping that they wouldn’t find her and Robb. There were only so many places to hide, and they would’ve heard her, would’ve seen her if she’d gone upstairs. But she did have something. With shaking hands, she reached for her brother and pulled out the phone they’d slipped into his pocket, firing a text off to 911. _Greyjoy house_ , she tapped out. _Him and Joffrey. Gun._ And then she dialed Theon’s home number. 

One of them picked up almost immediately, though there was a long moment before Joffrey said, “Hello?”

“Are you alone in the house?” she asked, and she could hear her own voice echoing out in that same raspy tone from the other room. As urgently as she dared, she began pawing through the coats and shoeboxes in the cabinet, hands blindly searching for anything she could use as a weapon as she pinned the phone between her shoulder and cheek. 

“You bitch,” Joffrey breathed. “Where the fuck are you?”

“Not so fast,” Sansa answered, her voice as steady as she could make it. “We’re gonna play a little game. It’s called guess who just called the police and reported your sorry motherfucking asses?”

“Find her,” she heard through the door. “Find her, you dipshit!”

Theon only groaned as she kept groping around for something. “I can’t, you fuckhead, you cut me too deep. I think I’m dying here, man.”

“Gods!” Joffrey shouted into the phone, and then all she could hear over the line was the occasional moan from Theon, his labored breathing. 

“How’s it feel to be betrayed?” she hissed into the phone, and Robb’s blue eyes met hers as her fingers felt something smooth, plastic, then fabric. The mask. She tugged it on, then felt around for the rest of the costume. “Do you think Joffrey was trying to kill you with that knife?” she continued, trying to keep him distracted, trying simultaneously to shrug into the long black robe without knocking into her brother or a wall or the door. If Theon and Joffrey were separated, if one of them did find her and Robb, maybe it would at least confuse them, buy her a minute. That was all she needed. “Did you really trust him not to?”

Theon groaned again, and then she could hear Joffrey snatching the phone away. “I’m gonna rip you up, you bitch,” he spat into the receiver. “Just like I did your disgusting mother.”

“You’ll have to find me first, you spoiled, egocentric, manipulative, murderous mama’s boy.”

She could hear him tearing through the house, furniture being upended, but she’d found something else. It wasn’t much, just an umbrella, but it would do, it had to. She dropped the phone and gripped her makeshift weapon, bracing herself as best she could. 

It didn’t take long for him to find her, and she leapt forward as soon as the door was open even a crack, jamming the tip of the umbrella into his chest. He dropped the gun, the closet door slammed open, the light shone across his face, and she got a better look this time, aiming for the darkest blood stain on his shirt. When the umbrella connected with its target, he was the one that dropped to the ground. She was panting, the adrenaline quickly leaking out of her, and she let the umbrella fall and then pulled off the mask. She kicked the gun away and it went skittering over by the front door, but she had only just stepped out of the closet when Theon rounded the corner in one last ditch effort. 

Weak or not, he was taller than her, heavier than her, and when he ran at her he knocked her to the ground. She used his momentum to roll them, but she’d only just scrambled on top of him, straddling his waist, when he knocked her off with a backhand. She clambered to her hands and knees, crawling away at first and then pushing herself up to run, but she hadn’t made it any further than the couch in the living room before he was slamming into her again, sending them both toppling over the back of it, onto the cushions, onto the floor below. 

“I always had a thing for ya, San!” he declared, his hands finding her wrists and wrestling her into the carpet, but she leaned over and sunk her teeth into his forearm and he yelped, his grasp loosening as he reared back. Her hand free, she reached over, grabbed one of the many beer bottles scattered around the edge of the room, and smashed it against his head. “Bitch,” he murmured, but it was clear he was losing whatever steam he had left, and she was able to shove him away hard enough to roll out from underneath him and spring to her feet. They were under the TV, a flat screen, 65” — she grabbed it by the edge, wrenched it off the wall, and it went tumbling down onto him, showering him in plaster and drywall in the process. He yelped again, his legs jerked, and then he went still. 

Feeling not so strong herself, she limped back into the hallway, letting out a sob when she accidentally stepped on some of the broken glass with her bare foot. She braced herself against the wall — and then nearly fell backwards when Arya suddenly shot up, gasping. 

“Arya!” she sobbed, and sank down to the ground, her hands covering her face. “I thought you were dead.”

“I probably should be,” Arya groaned, and Sansa could hear her crawling closer. “Gods, Theon's fucking scary movie rules. I never thought I’d be so happy that Gendry refuses to sleep with me.”

But Sansa could hear someone else stirring nearby, too, and when her eyes sprang open she saw Joffrey sit up, slam his fist forward into Arya’s jaw, and then his hands were around Sansa’s throat. “Say hello to your mother,” he hissed, and Sansa gasped and choked, her nails clawing at his wrists, then his neck, his shoulder. One of her hands found a stab wound, slippery with blood, and she thrust a finger into it as hard as she could. Joffrey reared back, and she saw now that he had the knife in his hand as it caught the light, but then he froze. 

It was only once the blood splattered across her face that she even processed the sound of the gunshot, and then Joffrey was falling away. Sansa sucked in a desperate, grateful breath, tilted her head back, and upside down she could see Margaery standing at the front door, gun in hand. 

“Guess I remembered the safety that time, you bastard,” she said. 

Sansa rolled over onto all fours and pushed herself back to standing, then reached for Arya to help her up, too. Her sister’s shoulder was dark with blood, her whole front soaked, but Arya staggered to Margaery and took the gun from her hand as Sansa stepped over Joffrey to help Robb out of the closet. Margaery kept her distance, but Arya walked closer, kicking Joffrey with one toe of her boot. He didn’t move. 

“Careful,” Sansa pleaded. 

“Yeah, I know,” Arya said hollowly. “This is the moment when the supposedly dead killer comes back to life for one last scare.”

Arya kicked Joffrey again, harder this time, and he jerked forward, groaning. She pulled the trigger. His body flopped back, boneless, a hole in his head. 

“Not in this movie,” Arya intoned, then dropped the gun back to the ground.

\--

Margaery sat on the porch as they heard the sirens screaming in the distance, growing louder as they got closer. Arya flopped down next to Jon’s body, but Sansa couldn’t look at him, could only keep her eyes determinedly on Robb as she delicately peeled the duct tape away from his mouth, wrist, ankles. Freed, he gathered her up in a hug, reaching out a hand for Arya, too, and they sat like that until the police cars and ambulances finally pulled up. 

“Arya,” Sansa croaked as the first EMT approached them. “She was shot.” 

But Arya shrugged off the attention stubbornly. “Jon,” she said. “Look at Jon.”

Sansa bit back a wail, burying her face in Robb’s sleeve. Jon was gone, couldn’t Arya see that, the knife was still in his back, his chest wasn’t rising or falling — but the EMT looked up, startled, after grabbing his wrist. 

“He has a pulse,” they said faintly, and then snapped into high gear, the other EMTs rushing closer as they did what they could to stabilize Jon’s neck and lift him onto a stretcher on his side. 

“I’m going with him,” Arya declared, but neither she nor Robb put up a fight, they just nodded. 

“We’ll meet you at the hospital,” Robb said, voice rusty from disuse, and he helped Sansa to her feet as they loaded Jon into an ambulance, Arya climbing in behind him. Now it was Robb’s turn to slip an arm around her, and he helped her cautiously down the stairs, shifting her weight onto him so her bare foot never made contact with the ground. A police officer waved them into a squad car, and he helped her settle in the back before circling around to the other side. 

In the distance, Margaery was met by a flurry of reporters, and Sansa watched as she fluffed her hair, wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, and somehow looked perfectly camera ready once more. 

“It’ll go something like this,” Margaery said, then flipped her hair back and straightened her posture. “Hi, this is Margaery Tyrell, with an exclusive eyewitness account of this amazing breaking story.” The squad car’s engine started up, the reporter started walking, but Sansa could still hear the other woman, just barely. “Several more local teens are dead, bringing to an end a harrowing mystery of the mass killing that has terrified this peaceful community, like the plot of some scary movie. It all began with a scream over 911 and ended in a blood bath…”

**Author's Note:**

> (Do you get the title? It's like 'Scream,' but they're Starks. So they howl. That was just a lil treat for me.) (Oh, also, I told someone in the comments, but I have ideas for the sequels, too, and will probably add them to this fic as new chapters if I ever get around to writing them. I have this marked as completed because it is! And it stands alone! But if you want to subscribe just in case of sequels, it's not a bad idea.)


End file.
